Sick and sleep update

So that cold I wrote about on Monday came at me full force that night, and I've been fighting it all week, as has been Cole. But he's a strong little guy, so he's getting through it. I'm starting to feel a bit better, but the congestion worked its way into my chest (same with Cole) and you know how that goes (cough up evil mucus for days - maybe even weeks). Keith also caught the cold (such is the story of our lives), but he seems to be on the mend.  (Let's cross our fingers for the both of us to be better soon!)

The sleep session I mentioned on Monday's post was helpful. This is what we got from it - that we need to create a safe and centered environment for Cole. Since we have been very on edge lately because of lack of sleep, we promised to be kinder to each other so that Cole feels safe and calm enough to sleep. We have been working on that all week. It's hard to not snap at the other person when you're sick AND tired, but we've both been trying.  I do NOT want to jinx it, but since Tuesday night we've been working hard at getting him to sleep by himself in the crib. (Ironically Tuesday night was the worst because we got home later than usual after that meeting). Helping him to sleep in the crib has required a huge amount of patience, sacrifice and discipline. Meaning we've had to lose lots of sleep in order to help him fall asleep in his own bed. And we've had to discipline ourselves to not give up and just bring him in bed with us so we could get sleep. We've really had to rely on each other to help the other out if we were not successful. That's a lot of teamwork on our parts. He's still waking up every few hours in the crib, but his last two nights of sleep were spent only in the crib. He takes all of his naps now at day care in the crib, too, so this is a good time to transition him to the crib.  I give us both props for exercising patience and being loving during a time when we might be least likely to.

We also learned that we need to have realistic goals. Our first goal is to get him to sleep in the crib by himself, then when he's comfortable there, we can start to work on moving away from waking up every 2 hours and transition to every 3. Who knows though, it could come on its own naturally. I know Allison's daughter Juni (whose feeding habits seem to be very similar to Cole's) started sleeping a four hour stretch when she was a little over 7 months old. So I keep that in mind and that feels like a light at the end of the tunnel.

So I have ANOTHER clogged duct. And it hurts! Keith pointed out that my ducts always seem to clog up on Fridays. And thinking back to some of the other times when I've gotten a clogged duct, I've realized that he is right. But I don't know why. Maybe by Friday, I'm toast? Who knows. I know that I stayed after work yesterday to get work done and today I ran around trying to make sure a quiz was revised and copied for Monday. I know that you can get clogged ducts from doing too much (among other things) so that could be what caused it. I'm sure that starting solids may have something to do with it too. So what to do? I'm certainly not going to take back that one night feeding I've given to Keith. I need the sleep too much.  I'm just hoping that enough nursing this weekend will unclog it.